Boethius’s The Consolation of Philosophy and Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five each contain a philosophy that molds the main character’s perspective on life. In each work, the philosophy in question is one of time and the conflict between permanence and change. Each narrative may agree about some aspects in time’s philosophy, but each narrative drastically differs in how it interprets time. However, the philosophies of both works intend to comfort the main character and, ultimately, the reader. Each author, with his consoling philosophy, evaluates time regarding aspects of life including religion, free will, and human reason, continuously examining the solution to human happiness.

Part One: Boethius and his philosophy of time, religion, free will, and human reason

In order to understand how each aspect of life in The Consolation of Philosophy is affected by time, we must discover who the main character is in each work. There is no question to the novel’s main character: Boethius. Boethius immerses himself within the novel, making himself and Philosophy the focal point of the plot. It is Boethius’s dilemma with time that causes Philosophy to intervene; her help may lead Boethius to enlightenment. It is Boethius who must undergo change in order to fully develop, thus making him the main character of the text.

Boethius, as the main character, believes in Fortune, a philosophy which states that man is controlled by cosmic wheel that equally balances the good and bad things that happen to an individual. Philosophy speaks on Fortune’s behalf: “Inconsistency is my very essence; it is a game I never cease to play as I turn my wheel in its ever changing circle, filled with joy as I bring the top to the bottom and the bottom to the top”(Boethius 57). Fortune is always changing, whether it is good or bad, but all good and bad things will be equal and unchanging in retribution. Although Fortune appears to be changing, it is consistent insomuch that it must always equal the bad with the good. Therefore, there is no need to stress over bad instances in life because the good ones will always balance them out.

Boethius intertwines his beliefs of Fortune and Christianity, the latter being the basis of his search for meaning and enlightenment. He believes in God and says, “we ought to pray to the Father of all things” before he strives to discover the supreme good. He even uses a metaphor of happiness “like the limbs to a body”(Boethius 103), an idea first introduced in Paul’s epistles in the New Testament. Therefore, Christianity has great significance in Boethius’s philosophy of time.

An elaborate part of Boethius’s philosophy of time concerning religion involves the idea of Providence and Fate. Under the unchanging mind of God, Providence is God’s plan, His foreknowledge of events, His “purity of understanding”(Boethius 135). “Providence is the divine reason itself”(Boethius 135). However, Fate is “the planned order inherit in things subject to change through the medium of which Providence binds everything in its own allotted place”(Boethius 135). In short, Providence is the permanent plan in God’s mind while Fate is the carrying out of the plan subject to change. “Providence includes all things at the same time… while Fate controls the motion of different individual things in different places and in different times”(Boethius 135). Therefore, Fate has control over linear time, whereas Providence is linear time viewed all at once in the divine mind: “God is eternal, the world perpetual”(Boethius 165).

Boethius builds his argument about the existence of Providence and Fate on the shaky ground of understood Christian beliefs, making the argument invalid. Everything Boethius says is mere speculation and cannot be taken as fact because he never proves the existence of his Christian God(or never will); he can only guess to what Providence and Fate are. He says, “everyone agrees that that which has no superior is good. Reason shows that God is so good that we are convinced His goodness is perfect”(Boethius 99). If Boethius were to build his entire argument on these words, which he does, it makes the claim of Providence and Fate a fallacy. Nonetheless, Boethius continues to make his argument in consideration to some divine power, even though he has never proven its existence.

With the basis of Christianity in mind, Philosophy tells Boethius that the answer to happiness lies within himself. The entire notion of cognition can only be viewed through Boethius and everything he will come to learn will be his own. However, this individualistic attitude does not deny external forces, for they are crucial. However, man’s struggle to become virtuous is the greatest good and this may only be attained through self-discernment.

Individualism breeds the conception of free will. However, it seems as though Philosophy talks herself into hypocrisy when she states that Providence and free will can exist simultaneously. Boethius observes “that if from eternity Providence foreknows not only men’s actions but also their thoughts and desires, [then] there will be no freedom of will”(Boethius 150). How can it be, then, that free will and Providence exist accordingly? “God sees those future events which will happen of free will as present events; so that these things when considered with reference to God’s sight of them do happen necessarily as a result of the condition of divine knowledge”(Boethius 167). What Boethius states here is that humans know themselves to have free will. In God’s mind, there is still free will, but He has the insight to understand necessary future events. In other words, free will exists only to man, not to God; man has more freedom over events that are not necessary.

If Boethius’s argument still seems unproven, there is good reason for it to be. There is one major element to why free will and Providence can exist concurrently: the limited boundaries of human reason. Boethius states that human reason, albeit a gift from God, cannot fathom God’s own ideas, including Providence. He states, “the superior manner of knowledge includes the inferior, but it is quite impossible for the inferior to rise to the superior”(Boethius 158). Man cannot begin to comprehend the ideas that God knows; man is God’s creation and cannot be elevated to his divine knowledge. Therefore, it is senseless to use our senses of perception and reason to vainly attempt to understand the purpose of God’s Providence. All humanity can do is to understand the outcome of Fate and exercise free will with the supreme goodness in mind.

Reason is a useless tool for understanding because it knows not what God perceives. Boethius says, “Reason belongs only to the human race, just as intelligence belongs only to divinity”(161). Therefore, Boethius makes it seem useless for mortals to use reason because it is deceitful. However, Boethius contradicts himself, saying human reason is ultimately useless and is ultimately important. Reason cannot be used to understand Providence, but Boethius still pushes the ridiculous argument that reason can understand God: “Reason shows that God is so good that we are convinced his Goodness is perfect”(Boethius 99). Once again, this quote reemphasizes the shaky proof of the existence of God, but also states that our “faulty human reason” must be used to understand God’s goodness as perfect.

Part Two: Vonnegut and his philosophy of time, religion, free will, and human reason in

comparison with Boethius’s philosophy

In the same way Boethius acts as the narrator and main character of The Consolation of Philosophy, Vonnegut acts as the narrator and ultimately main character of Slaughterhouse Five. The Tralfamadorians affect Vonnegut’s life in much the same way Philosophy influences Boethius’s existence: both are imaginary superiors who guide the main character towards wisdom. However, attention is drawn away from Vonnegut since he appears in only the first and last chapters of the novel(and twice in the Billy Pilgrim story line. Vonnegut 125, 148). Nonetheless, he is the main character simply because he is the one who experiences change. The catalyst of his change is his war experience, through which he discovers a newfound philosophy of time. Vonnegut uses the phrase “So it goes” in both his story line and the Billy Pilgrim story line, demonstrating that he relates himself wholeheartedly to the Tralfamadorian philosophy. Billy Pilgrim and the Tralfamadorians are merely his way of expressing his learned philosophy in comprehensible and comical terms.

Vonnegut explains the Tralfamadorian philosophy in the following words:

All moments, past, present, and future, always have existed, always will exist. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just the same way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them. It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever(Vonnegut 27).

The Tralfamadorians are capable of viewing the world in the fourth dimension, unable to see time as linear. On the other hand, human beings like Boethius, are “trapped” in the third dimension clinging to the phony belief that what occurs one moment affects the next moment along the linear path of time. However, the Tralfamadorians have the divine knowledge to understand that “the moment is structured”(Vonnegut 117), that nothing humans do can change the overall configuration of time. Vonnegut’s philosophy is one of predestination, the belief that every aspect of life has already been determined. With this philosophy, Vonnegut tells the audience that they have no choice but to say to themselves, “That’s life”(Vonnegut 115) about every moment, whether it be good or bad, because there is nothing humans can do to change it.

The idea of predestination resembles Boethius’s concept of divine Providence. Providence attempts to explain that everything is already known in the heavenly mind while the Tralfamadorians tell Billy that they are able to see all moments at once. However, with both philosophies of time understood, they take somewhat separate paths in explaining the many aspects of life.

The authors take separate paths with respect to the concept of religion, but arrive at a somewhat similar conclusion. Boethius tells us that God dwells in a timeless existence. This is similar to the Tralfamadorians, who view life in the fourth dimension, outside of time. A conclusion can be made that the Tralfamadorians are a type of God, since they attain both the divine qualities of philosophical knowledge and of timeless being. Boethius uses a very “Tralfamadorian” quote in describing God in one of his poems: “‘What is, what was, what is to be,/in one swift glance His mind can see./All things by Him alone are seen,/And Him the true sun we should deem.’”(Boethius 150). The Tralfamadorians, like God, can see all of time, including how it begins and how it ends: “We(The Tralfamadorians) know how the Universe ends-”(Vonnegut 116). Both authors mirror each other in this one aspect: supreme beings can view life outside of time.

Both Vonnegut and Boethius develop their strong sense of beliefs in the same manner: suffering. Boethius, under the realm of God, believes he is innocent of all crimes and has been unjustly imprisoned: “instead of reward for true goodness, punishment for a crime I did not commit”(Boethius 45). His inexplicable suffering during his imprisonment causes a deepened introspection, with the help of Philosophy, to discover meaning in his life. Through Philosophy, he finds his answers in a Christian God who is the “supreme good.” Vonnegut, like Boethius, also finds meaning in suffering through his camp imprisonment in World War II. Vonnegut expresses the suffering of the average soldier through Billy Pilgrim, being enslaved by the enemy in a war he cannot control. In addition, Vonnegut uses two external innocent death scenarios that cause him to find meaning in the Tralfamadorian philosophy. First, the 135,000 lives lost in the firebombing of Dresden, a city unguarded, exemplifies the absurdity of pointless death. Second, the execution of poor old Edgar Derby, “the climax of the book”(Vonnegut 5), demonstrates the irrationality of soldiers to kill a man who commits a trivial crime. Nonetheless, Vonnegut must find some way to explain the necessity of these pointless deaths. Billy Pilgrim understands “that the idea of preventing war on Earth is stupid.”(Vonnegut 117). Therefore, Vonnegut consoles himself, saying, “there would always be wars, that they were as easy to stop as glaciers”(Vonnegut 3). Since it is beyond Vonnegut’s control to stop wars and “plain old death”(Vonnegut 4), he adapts the Tralfamadorian philosophy for solace.

Vonnegut, after adapting Tralfamadorian philosophy, also abandons the concept of free will. The Tralfamadorians, through careful analysis and scrutiny of the Universe, discover a startling fact about Earth. A Tralfamadorian tells Billy, “I’ve visited thirty-one inhabited planets in the universe, and I have studied reports on one hundred more. Only on earth is there any talk of free will”(Vonnegut 86). The Tralfamadorians have the divine knowledge to tell Billy Pilgrim that Earthlings are the only creatures in the universe who try to explain everything, when in fact “there is no why”(Vonnegut 77) to explain. Events occur simply because they are structured that way, say the Tralfamadorians. The concept of free will is merely an illusion to earthlings, who are too immersed in the moment to see the overall structure of life. “All moments, past, present, and future, always have existed, always will exist,”(Vonnegut 27) according to Vonnegut. This philosophy is not gloomy, but it is motivational because it helps human beings accept every moment for what it is worth. Boethius’s idea of Providence resembles predestination, but within Providence, humans can still practice free will if they follow the supreme good. Vonnegut, however, demonstrates that it does not matter whether you are good or bad; humans have positively no control over their own situation.

One interesting distinction between Boethius and Vonnegut arises in the importance of humanity, which may address why their ideas of free will may differ. Boethius learns that humanity is the most precious of all species if he follows the good:

So what happens is that when a man abandons goodness and ceases to be human, being unable to rise to a divine conviction, he sinks to the level of being an animal(Boethius 125).

Vonnegut recognizes mankind as continually insignificant and inconsequential, stating that “Earth has nothing to do with” the end of the universe(Vonnegut 117). Human beings are not above any other form of life because every form of life will eventually die. Unlike Boethius, who believes in the strength of human volition to do the good, Vonnegut learns from the Tralfamadorians that “every creature and plant in the universe is a machine”(Vonnegut 154). This de-emphasizes the strength of human freedom and control and reemphasizes the concept of predestination.

Predestination, by its very nature, states that human reason is limited. If humans cannot understand that there is no free will, like Vonnegut says, there must be some restriction on humanity’s understanding of reality. Boethius and Vonnegut agree on the falsehood of human reason. Boethius says, as previously stated, humans cannot know what God’s Providence holds for us because we are inferior to Him. Vonnegut, like Boethius, states that there are different ways to view life outside our own three-dimensional existence, ways that human beings cannot perceive. Furthermore, Vonnegut uses a metaphor to describe the limitations of our reasoning from the Tralfamadorians point of view:

The guide invited the crowd to imagine that they were looking across a desert at a mountain range on a day that was twinkling bright and clear. They could look at a peak or a bird or a cloud, at a stone right in front of them, or even down into a canyon behind them. But among them was this poor Earthling, and his head was encased in a steel sphere which he could never take off. There was only one eyehole through which he could look, and welded to that eyehole were six feet of pipe(Vonnegut 115).

Billy Pilgrim, who is far too involved in whatever he sees at the end of the pipe, cannot see everything else around that eyehole. Now that he has an understanding of this, he has learned to accept whatever he sees at the end of that pipe and say to himself, “That’s life”(Vonnegut 115). Both Boethius and Vonnegut have a similar understanding that human reason cannot understand the divine forces that create life, and both accept the limitations of logic.

Conclusion

The ultimate goal of each work is to console the main character and its readers through its philosophy. Has each work done this, and did it comfort its readers efficiently? It is obvious that each of the main characters has found divine enlightenment, but the reader must also feel enlightened for each work to be a success. What does each philosophy say about happiness?

Boethius states that there is no happiness to be found in “blindness and ignorance,” because “he [who is blind and ignorant] does not know it”(Boethius 64). He then goes on to define a philosopher’s happiness: “he measures happiness not by popularity, but by the true voice of his own conscience”(Boethius 89). Finally, Boethius states that “it must be admitted that provided the other qualities are permanent, it will be full of happiness”(Boethius 95). Therefore, the conscious knowledge of permanent things will lead to a life full of virtue and happiness.

Vonnegut agrees that discovering permanence will lead to happiness, but embraces this idea further demonstrating that everything is permanent. Regarding death, this philosophy helps console us by saying, “…when a person dies he only appears to die. He is very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral”(Vonnegut 26-27). Vonnegut wants his novel and its Tralfamadorian philosophy to console others, asking the question, “Isn’t that comforting?”(Vonnegut 135) not only to the little boy who must cope with his father’s death, but to cope with death as a whole. Vonnegut wants “the serenity to accept the things he cannot change,” which are “the past, the present, and the future.” Therefore, Vonnegut wants his audience to understand that serene acceptance is what leads to contentment.

Boethius and Vonnegut take different paths to explain time, but connect when they each illustrate the happiness found in permanence. Vonnegut, however, takes this notion a step further, stating that all life is permanent and nothing has changed, is changing, or will change. Nonetheless, they both still agree in the importance of permanence in life. Humanity’s faulty reasoning cannot completely understand divine wisdom nor can it understand its own physical existence; humanity must ultimately accept life as is and search for happiness and contentment. There are incomprehensible forces beyond our control; we must find peace with the inferiority of mankind and accept that we know nothing about the external forces around us to attain enlightenment, just as Boethius and Vonnegut have done.